As Gary, Indiana, recovers from flooding and a two-week power outage, we also speak with Ron Daniels, president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century, who discusses the city’s history as a site of Black struggle and organizing. In 1972, the city hosted the National Black Political Convention, which brought together thousands of activists to plan for increasing African American political power. Attendees included Coretta Scott King, Betty Shabazz, Jesse Jackson, Bobby Seale, Louis Farrakhan, Shirley Chisholm, Harry Belafonte and Amiri Baraka.
“It was one of the great gatherings in the history of Black people in this country,” says Daniels, who calls the current backlash to racial progress “the dying gasp of a system that needs a major overhaul.”
